The NGO France Terre d’Asile asked me to create a series of portraits for a campaign addressed to the British Government on March 2016. The goal was for children who were stuck in Calais, to be allowed to cross to the family waiting for them in the UK.
We chose to represent them as heroes, and not as victims. I wanted to place a positive light on these teenagers who, despite having lost the innocence of childhood, continue to laugh and to project themselves into a better future. It is them, and their strength, that I wanted to highlight, not the misery that, even though very real, seemed to me often enough put forward in photographs of migrants in camps.
For what strength and determination must be needed to travel 4000 miles, facing dangers and death all along the way? Hard to really imagine ourselves facing those terrible journeys, harder still to imagine children facing them alone. Yet many have done so, with bravery worthy of Super Heroes.
During those few days spent in Calais, I felt privileged to meet people full of hope, overflowing with dignity, and proud to show it. Yet some of the stories told by these kids who fled their countries, and who survived the passers, the traffics and the criminal networks, are simply blood curling.
Even if the heroes of this series sometimes look tired and are heroes despite themselves, they command our admiration, the way the Superheroes in the comics of our childhood did.